I really need to write an entry about managing my spoons per day, because at the moment I’m having trouble leaving myself enough to even get through until 4:00 p.m. during the school week.

I know that I need to recenter myself, refocus, and remember to simplify. I need to use the tools at my disposal.

I need to remind myself of how to do those things and what those tools are.

Before I can even write that blog… I need to take a big breath. In through the nose to the count of five, with the eyes closed. Pause. Out through the mouth until all of the air is gone. Pause. Breathe in through the nose to the count of five. Pause. Breathe out through the mouth until all of the air is gone. When you do this breathing exercise, think of nothing except the breathing. Focus and direct all efforts on your breathing. Do this five times without rushing the process. Keep your eyes closed, and don’t allow outside distractions, such as children or spouses but most especially your phone to interrupt.

This exercise takes as long as it takes. Do it twice if you need, but this exercise will force your brain, body, and anxiety to relax. Bringing in oxygen and forcing out thoughts does wonders.

As it so happens, thanks to recent news, Jill Stein and that other guy, um, Gary Johnson are completely out of the question as well as long as Senator Clinton stays in the race. As of today Gary Johnson has as chance of less than 0.1%. That’s not even a quarter of a percent of a chance of winning. Jill Stein isn’t even placing a fraction of a single digit percentage. They would both have to completely change their platforms to gain any sort of traction with anyone; and they would have to, well, not be Independent or Green Party.😉 Because with their individual platforms and the ideals of each party? I have to go with,

“Thank you, hell no.”

If you’ve followed my blog at all lately, you’ve probably noticed that I’m not a Trump supporter.😉 I’ve questioned why people support him. But then… I may have been a little insulting at times in my passion for my intense dislike of Trump regarding just how little I understand why reasonable people could even consider voting for Trump, but then again ‘m not running for office.

You’ve probably guessed by now if it weren’t obvious that the only option I find reasonable is Senator Clinton. She’s by far the safest choice.

Anything she does is under a microscope. Things from three decades ago are brought under scrutiny, twisted into half-truths and outright lies, and turned into spiteful memes. Present non-issues are “trumped up” if you will and blown into nontroversies until every single Trump Supporter and I Already Hate Hillary Clinton Frother laps it up with a big fat ladle.

They’ll pick apart her statements where she apologizes, even when she has no need to apologize. They’ll comment on how that’s a lie or only stated to gain voters or it’s rhetoric. That’s to be scrutinized crumb by crumb, ingredient by ingredient, until it’s lost all meaning. She can talk about her grandchild or daughter, and that has ulterior motives.

She coughs, and the world is on notice and thinks she’s not being transparent enough in her campaign or in regard to her health.

If only any month’s worth of comments Trump has made were scrutinized by the media so much as any single comment made or cough and antibiotic taken by Hillary Clinton at any given moment. Pneumonia is viewed as a death knell, apparently, and deceitful to boot. Who knew that allowing herself to become dehydrated and catching the common cold now and then wasn’t transparent, was deceitful, and she was on her deathbed. It apparently adds to the mountain of criminal activities she’s involved in while trying to destroy America in her conspiracy with President Obama.

Then this landed in my lap today from a friend on Facebook:

Pundits claim Clinton had a bad week. Next to Donald Trump’s seven days of gaffes and scandal, that is insane.

Well, I look forward to the day that we can call it the Ovulation Office, thank you very much.

Now, I’m not giving Senator Clinton a free pass. I don’t believe she’s perfect. I haven’t always supported her. In fact, for the majority of my life, I’ve “hated” the Clintons. The thing is, I’ve grown up. I’ve done research in unbiased sources. Some of what I thought I knew, I was proven right except not in the way I thought and most of what I believed was disproven.

For instance, calling half of Trump Supporters “a basket of Deplorables.” I mean… Trump likely doesn’t even know what the word means but most of his fans do, and many of his supporters are educated and are on the fence on whether to support him or her. I might agree with the sentiment that there are many, many deplorable Trump Supporters, and there’s very good reason. But the fact is that TRUMP is deplorable.

There are many HRC supporters who have been asking what the big deal is in her insulting Trump voters when Trump has been nothing but crude, rude, crass, vulgar, and outright insulting to every voter out there except for racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic voters. In fact, the wording she used wasn’t crass or vulgar.

She was composed and used a relaxed, almost humorous tone of voice. She was speaking to the educated of America. She was speaking to those whom she knew were already on her side and didn’t need rhetoric or cajoling or politicking. She was in a safety zone.

That was exactly the problem.

Due to who she is, and what she is ie. a female AND a Clinton, she doesn’t have a safety zone.

She’s automatically being held under a much greater microscope and to a much higher standard than Trump or any other male. She’s always had to hold herself to a higher standard, and she always has just like any other woman in virtually every career that exists. She’s always carried herself with dignity and grace under pressure, and this was a slip. It wasn’t even as bad as that slip that Mitt Romney made when he denigrated all voters during his campaign for President.

During election seasons, when you’re running for any office but especially for President of the United States, you simply don’t insult the voters. You don’t insult the voters of your opponent because of the off chance you might have had that they would have become your voters at some point in the near or far future. If you call your opponent’s voters “deplorable” even if you specify “half of them” then those people are going to wonder if you really meant “all” and therefore…. you’ve personally insulted every single voter of the opponent. They now have a personal reason to hate you. They don’t simply hate Hillary for the lies spun from half truths by the GOP, or because they dislike that she’s female or a lawyer or a former first lady or a Democrat or “too liberal” even though she’s practically a Republican, or her wardrobe, or who she used to be friends with, who donates money to her campaign, who her husband used to be friends with, the colors lipstick she chooses, the sound of her voice, etc.

They now believe that even if they momentarily supported Trump, HRC finds them deplorable and will automatically assume them to be racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic. You have to be careful with the voters. Most of them may be harsh to each other, even in their own circles and families, but they have very thin skins if they think the spotlight is on them. Anything that seems critical of anything they support and it’s a personal insult. And even if they do have these deplorable qualities, are they really irredeemable? Is that really a judgment on their character that any candidate should make? No, it’s not.

Even if they do have these deplorable qualities, who wants to say that those qualities are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or any sort of -ist or -phobic or a bigot? Not when they have justification after justification after justification for being anti-whatever it is.

Those things are very true of Donald Trump. And yes, those things are very, very true of many of his fans. But at the same time, there are people who are voting for him not because they support him but because they feel they can’t support any other candidate. Many people are single issue voters, or can’t get past a particular story they heard and don’t research well enough to find out if something was as true as they believe. Many people don’t care to know. Many people just won’t vote for The Woman or A Democrat.

I think she knows these things, and even if it’s more rhetoric, she nearly immediately apologized and expressed regret for her comments. She then dropped the other shoe, and that cracked me up.

Trump has tried that maybe once or twice, and it backfires. It’s always a crass and backhanded nonpology. Hillary Clinton backtracked quite eloquently, regretting that she generalized so grossly and shouldn’t have said “half.” She put the onus of lifting up individuals that are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, etc. back onto TRUMP. Essentially she called him out for glorifying those traits in people who find those qualities admirable… even if they don’t like the words used to describe those qualities. She called Trump’s social media contributions to be offensive, hateful, and mean-spirited rhetoric. She did state that some of those people are irredeemable (which is true) and “Not America” which is also true of the IDEAL IDEA of America.

She also said that his supporters are people that are looking for change in any form because of economic anxiety and she urged her supporters to empathize with them.

Oh yeah, and the e-mails too. What started as a non-troversy to begin with, and is turning out to be one of the BEST things she ever did. After all of the investigations and committees and waste of tax dollars, because the Republicans have this need to discredit her and try to make her look foolish; after an FBI investigation found her to have done nothing criminal; it turns out that just as it was stated early on in the first week or two that her servers were FAR MORE SECURED than the government servers at that time. It also turns out that if her servers were being used today they’d be more secure than the currently updated servers the government uses. Because her servers were SEPARATE and therefore much, much harder to hack. That was the whole point of several government officials having their own servers.

So I found this below, which was written last week. And to think, I was almost THISCLOSE to thinking that the e-mail stuff actually was a bit more scandalous than I originally believed, and I’d have to eat a bit of crow. That I didn’t actually know what I was talking about way in the beginning.

The attention paid to it has far surpassed the boundaries of the facts.

You know, I just realized that I never once commented on the positive aspects of HRC’s campaign. I pulled a stunt that I HATE from certain Trump fans. My apologies. I clearly had some purging and pontificating to do! LOL

So, I’ll save the, “why I support HRC versus other candidates” post for another day. This one got out of control and too long.🙂 Ta, loves!

Let’s Play Pretend

You’re a nutritionist.

You’re a nutritionist that’s advising clients about how to choose healthy and healthier foods when they’re out and they have very limited options. You teach them about basic ingredients; whole ingredients and whole foods; which ingredients are all right when refined and which aren’t; which ingredients to always avoid; how to read ingredient labels; how to prepare meal plans and meals. How to shop for groceries.

Your client knows that fruits and veggies are the best choices. Include them in as many meals as possible. Find fats and oils from as many natural sources as possible. Avoid low-fat and low-calorie labels. Avoid sugar-free labels and artificial sweeteners. Avoid artificial dyes and high fructose corn syrup. 100% whole grains. Real ingredients. Real food. As much as possible.

All in preparation for how to be able to choose between poor options, and when to refrain from any options at all; and when it’s not healthy to refrain from making a choice.

The Day Comes

One day they’re at a party and there’s a cookie table. Let’s say it’s a political party. An election, even. At the back of the table, the fruit and veggie trays are out of reach and wrapped up and not an option. Apparently the best options are for later.

There’s a plate of cookies that are simple sugar cookie. They look fabulous.

There’s one plate of cookies that are sugar cookies with caramel in the middle. Also pretty delicious looking.

There’s another plate of cookies that appear homemade, and they have some chocolate chips; in fact, these cookies have chocolate chips on one half of the cookie and white chips on the other half, but your client dislikes chocolate chips. He thinks they’re disgusting. They also have some sprinkles on top. The sprinkles aren’t completely natural or healthy, but that’s ok. It’s just sprinkles. You can flick those off if needed.

There’s another plate of cookies, but they’re clearly not homemade. They’re supposed to be pumpkin cookies with white chips, but they’re so bright orange they had to be pumped full of dye. There are fire-hot cinnamon chips in them, so hot they’ll make you gag, and Lemon War Heads and Jawbreakers on top. Clearly these cookies are vile, and not worth another look because every ingredient will make your client sick. There’s nothing natural at all in them. They’re completely toxic.

Your client walks away for a while to see what’s happening at the party, but when he comes back he notices that the cookies he really, really wanted, the sugar cookies and caramel cookies, have been completely eaten up. He was too late. All he’s left with are the chocolate-white-chocolate chip cookies and the pumpkin-nasty-ass cookies. He knows the pumpkin cookies will make him incredibly ill, and even have far too many ingredients in them that will make him sick and even have ingredients he’s allergic to… but he desperately hates chocolate chips.

So he eats the whole plate of fake pumpkin cookies stuffed with nastiness, just to avoid the chocolate chips in the chocolate chip half of the cookies.

And he’s so violently ill, he’s vomiting orange for four years and regrets every damned bite wishing he had eaten the half and half cookies.

I completely understand that cookies, on principle, are not healthy. That’s entirely the point I’m trying to make in what I hope is an obvious parallel. And I must note on a personal level that Sally’s Baking Addiction has the most bang-up amazingly awesome cookies you’ll ever bake whether you have a nutritionist or not. You’ll bake your own just so you have an awesome choice at a political party.

I don’t get paid to write this blog. I’m not good enough. So take me at my word when I say, as a very hyper-critical caramel-in-coffee-but-I-love-it coffee drinker that this is THEBEST salted caramel… nay, caramel creamer for your coffee.

I say this, admittedly, as someone who already enjoys Natural Bliss. It’s the only one besides pure organic cream that I can drink in my coffee without contributing to pain issues and migraines.

I was skeptical about the flavor before buying because so many caramel creamers leave a weird aftertaste. No worries. I’m not buying any other caramel creamer brands now.
COFFEE-MATE Natural Bliss Salted Caramel Creamer

I don’t write about this often even though I’m sure a lot of you could empathize. Fibromyalgia and weight issues often go hand in hand.

The thing is, it’s usually not for the reasons you might think. There are many who have Fibro that are underweight, and can’t seem to gain no matter how much effort they put in to make sure they get a calorie packed diet. There are many who are overweight and can’t seem to lose no matter how healthful and active they are in spite of the pain. I don’t know if people realize just how hard it is to have an appetite when you’re in moderate to severe pain 90% of the time. Pain suppresses the appetite. Many medications suppress the appetite as a side effect. With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as a co-diagnosis, it’s hard to eat if you’re so fatigued you can’t even chew or blink, let alone cook a full meal or go grocery shopping very often.

The fact is that no matter how healthfully we eat and are active in spite of the pain and fatigue, we have to deal with the biology of the disorder and additional health issues and co-diagnoses that are part of the very real chronic disorder that has a mind of its own. We do the best we can when we can as often as we can. We just hope it’s enough.

I’ve been fat, and I’ve been slender. I’ve been in between too. People treated me better when I was in between than when I was fat. People treated me far, far, far better when I was slender than when I was in between or fat. Because due to Fibromyalgia, my weight blew up to 280 lbs on a 5’4″ frame.

Give me a moment to digest the fact that I’m divulging this sort of information.

When I was That Fat, people treated me shamefully in public. People, nurses, treated me shamefully in doctor’s appointments. People feel obligated to say nasty things about food intake and exercise, and apparent lack of willingness to conform to anything healthy yet have the nerve to complain about being heavy. It’s still acceptable to fat shame here in America because A.) people think it’s helpful to point out the fat and ugliness of it and B.) they think it’s motivational to be rude and mean and C.) some people just think it’s funny to shame people due to their size and act like bullies.

Since I started to lose the weight, in the typical Fibro start and stop fashion, I have dropped 85 lbs so far. This number is accurate as of 1 1/2 weeks ago. And let me tell you, I’m thrilled over breaking that 200 lb barrier. It took me six months to do that with tripled efforts, which means for me trying to fit in 2500 calories a day with as much full fat in whole foods as possible. I try listen to my body when the fatigue takes me down. Managing the pain, managing the relief so that I could move more easily has helped. A few months ago we got a wonderful new mattress so being more rested helps.

During all of time, with each 15 lb mark of weight loss, I see and feel a difference.

Oh, not a difference in how I feel physically. My pain is still there in full force and in fact I’m in far more pain than before I started to lose the weight I gained. That weight that never belonged there.

There’s a difference in how people are treating me and looking at me. People are offering me their places in line again. They’re smiling at me again, more smiles with each pound I lose. More doors being held open for me, where when I was fat, people made it a point of looking me in the face and letting the doors close.

There are people asking me if I need help. People are complimenting me out of nowhere lately on my clothes when I run errands after work. Strangers.

People are noticing my pain now. They are actually seeing my face. They see the pain in my face AND my body, and then they see my cane, and they’re kinder.

I’m not behaving any differently. I’m still me. The only real difference is my weight. This all feels good because I never realized before how kindly people treated me when I was slender. I sure did notice while at my fattest how poorly people treated me. I was invisible to many, less important. Even certain family members. Slimming out somehow is legitimizing.

That angers me a bit, but saddens me more. I think maybe I don’t need to explain why. You guys are pretty intelligent.

But guys… I’ve lost 85 lbs. I know I’m poopooing it, but I am happy about it. Maybe my pain isn’t better, but I know that my risk of Diabetes is down; my risk of Heart Disease is down; and even though I have very low cholesterol intake, my body was producing more bad cholesterol on its own while heavier. I was also drinking more coffee, though, which raises the bad cholesterol readings. Yes…. yes…. while still a coffee fiend I did reduce my coffee intake to two cups tops a day.

My next goal is 25 more. I know it’ll be slow, and that’s okay. If I never lost another pound but suddenly magically had Disney Princess hair, I’d die happy in old age (somewhere in the far future, I hope).

So I got up yesterday morning to ready myself for work, as one does. I do it prior to coffee. I do it prior to the daughters getting ready. I turn on the TV to listen to local news for the weather and headlines.

There was about what you would expect at 5:dark o’kiss my ass it’s too early for anything. Watching/listening with my bedroom TV that I can’t rewind, so really, at first I didn’t really believe what I was hearing. Later I went downstairs where, when I hear what seems like ridiculous news, is often confirmed downstairs because that’s the TV that tells me the truth.

Yes. The Today Show confirmed what seemed like the imminent dramedy of:

The Most Ridiculous News Story Diverting Attention From Important Headlines Today

Loves, I regret to inform you that Sarah Palin is whoring herself out yet again in a phenomenally new and unexpected way. She has plans in the works to have a television show just like Judge Judy Sheinlin of Judge Judy fame where she, Sarah Whackadoodle Palin, is the judge. Or judge-like person. Judging people in court.

What are her qualifications, you ask? Well, I thought maybe she’d whip out a secret law degree or some such thing but, well, Sarah Whackadoodle Dee Dee Palin being who she is believes that she’s qualified enough to be a judge in a court having, you know, chosen plenty of judges during her tenure as a governor of Alaska.

That’s not all, folks!

She also has all of that experience IN TELEVISION THESE PAST EIGHT YEARS since the 2008 Presidential Elections, y’all!

If you don’t believe me, you have Google Fingers.

Now, here’s a warning. If you’re a Sarah Palin supporter and you think she’s a really classy lady, and you feel like telling me how women ought to be supporting women rather than tearing each other down, I’ll disagree with you on point A and agree with you on point B. My explanation on point B is because I disagree on point A. I’ve blogged in the distant past as to why. I won’t go into that now because I’ll use up all of the words I didn’t use yesterday when I blogged about Trump Fatigue.

There’s a meme going around with an ancient quote from a sixth century philosopher, Lao Tzu, so-called father of Taoism. It reads:

If you are depressed, you live in the past.
If you are anxious, you live in the future.
If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

I know this is meant to soothe or be, you know, wise. I know that some therapists use a similar approach with their patients.

The more I see this float around Facebook and other social media… the more I see this in my support groups… especially the ones where so many of us have anxiety and depression in addition to our physical disabilities… the more this quote makes me realize how much it’s adding to the stigma and misinformation about Depression and Anxiety Disorders.

It insinuates heavily that we can choose our state of peacefulness, anxiety, or depression. Granted this quote is from the sixth century when they didn’t have the knowledge we have now about neurological differences and disorders like Major Depressive Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar Disorders, Schizophrenia, Traumatic Brain Injuries, Intellectual Disabilities, Emotional Disorders, Mental Health Disorders, Behavioral Disorders, and more neurodiversity. Even if Depression and Anxiety aren’t the primary diagnoses, they can still be a secondary diagnosis and still be significant. There’s a biological basis for these concerns.

In other words, you’re born with it. You don’t choose it.

Depression has nothing to do with living in the past. Anxiety has little to do with living in the future. And let me tell you, living in the present is not usually a picnic but is in fact very often what causes anxiety and depression if we’re talking about situational depression and anxiety.

If we’re talking about situational depression and anxiety, talk therapy and using tools learned in therapy and coping mechanisms learned by experience in life can help ease the symptoms. Talking down, getting sunlight, exercise, proper diet, and all of those mood boosting things that we endorse (I do, really I endorse them because they’re helpful) are wonderful for situational depression.

If we’re talking about Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety, if we’re talking about other neurologically based depressive disorders and anxieties tied to them, there’s no control involved. There’s no talking it through. It’s not rational. Talk therapy may help, medical treatment may help more.

But it’s not a choice. And this meme… this meme of this quote is damaging to those of us who aren’t just going through Seasonal Affective Disorder or are sad because our boyfriend is cheating. We can’t just buck up and get over it because it’s not situational. It’s biological and we can’t turn it off. We have to let it cycle. A situation or mood may trigger it, but there’s usually a lead up with signs pointing to it. We can’t always see them or recognize them.

Please, if you see this meme with this quote, pretty lettering and all, don’t share it.